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Strategies & Market Trends : Booms, Busts, and Recoveries -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Seeker of Truth who wrote (35929)	7/10/2003 7:35:08 AM
From: Raymond Duray	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 74559

Malcolm, Re: (For reasons unknown to me the oil interests and Christian fundamentalists all love Israel !!???). Let me take a stab at this. In reverse order: The Christian fundamentalist mythology is based on Bible prophesy. They believe that congregating all the Jews in the Promised Land fulfills a part of the prophesy leading to the "Rapture", at which point all Jews must convert to Christianity or face eternal damnation. This of course is all childish fantasy, but the power of religion over weak minds is a certainly a force to be reckoned with. The second group, the "oil interests", are a more interesting group, intellectually, geopolitically and strategically. Their interest has been the key role that that Middle East oil plays in the market today, and has played for several decades. The great fear among the oil interests, and the strategic thinkers who are their handmaidens in Western governments, particularly the U.S., has been an obsession with "the Great Game" politics that were first espoused 100 years ago by the British imperialists. Basically, the subsidization of Israel is designed to provide an irritant to the region, and prevent any and all efforts at the creation of a pan-Arabian state. The creation of Iraq, out of whole cloth, in the aftermath of the collapse of the Ottoman Empire was designed to create a counterforce to the possible ascendancy of the Syrians, the Turks or the Iranians. The creation of Israel prevented the expansion of Syria's sphere of influence through Palestine, as well as keeping Egypt's Nasser bottled up in the traditional Egyptian territories. The recent invasion of Iraq was not, as was claimed, based on WMDs, or on Saddam's supposed threats as a terrorist sympathizer. His real sin in the eyes of the Bush Administration and the oil interests was Hussein's desire to take up Nasser's messianic goal of uniting all the Arab states in one government. This goal of Arab unity is absolutely anathema to the strategic thinkers in Washington and Houston. We go to war to prevent such consolidations of power. Notice that when Saddam was fighting the Iranians, we were pals. When Saddam was conquering and consolidating other Arab lands he instantly became the greatest enemy of the United States, and of Israel. The great threat to Western economies is that a strong pan-Arab nation state would control over 65% of the world's petroleum reserves* and would thus be able to dictate price and terms to the Western powers for this vital resource. This monopoly would potentially be catastrophic for the West. Thus, the U.S. has given well over $80 Billion in mostly military aid to Israel since the inception of that state, by far the biggest recipient of U.S. foreign aid. And we turn a blind eye to Israel's development of nuclear arms, the genocidal activities of the IDF and the horrifying conditions that the Palestinians live in. After all, better for a couple million local farmers in the Middle East to suffer than to have the economies of the Western world in turmoil, eh? Cheerio! Ray *Oil Reserves: bp.com

To: Seeker of Truth who wrote (35929)	7/10/2003 3:00:39 PM
From: energyplay	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74559

BCA on the Debt Supercycle - bcapub.com Note decline in corporate debt after the end of 1990 recession. We are seeing a decline in corporate debt now. What gives some people hope for a decline in consumer debt are demographics - baby boomers getting closer to retirement, they start saving more and reducing debt. Also, their kids will have finished college , and will (hopefully) stop being a drain on the family finances. The another positive factor is at thes low interest rates, paying down debt is MUCH easier. A significant fraction of the people refinancing the last two years are opting for shorter mortgages. One other positive factor are the low rates on money market funds, etc. If you are getting less than 1%, and you don't like the stock market, paying down the mortgage still gets you a 4.5-5.5 % return. Several dangers in the high level of consumer debt, of course - the newest one being that the FED no longer has an option to reduce mortgage payments by cutting interest rates. This means that inflation is critical for the next few years, before there is too much activity in paying down debt, which destroys money and is highly deflationary. Right now the markets seem to think that the massive fiscal and monetary stimmulus will work for a few years.... This is very much how things looked in 1990-1992. The weak economy became stronger in the mid 1990's, and many (but not all) of the problems were fixed or reduced.

To: Seeker of Truth who wrote (35929)	7/10/2003 4:08:30 PM
From: Maurice Winn	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74559

Malcolm, re bull markets and <The US consumer is deep in debt. > Debt is great, because it's so motivational. Remember Snow White and the 7 Dwarves? As the dwarves marched off to the mine with their picks over their shoulders, they sang, "I owe, I owe, it's off to work we go. I owe I owe I owe I owe, I owe, I owe." The USA has such huge debts that they'll be working for half a century. That's excellent. Working is production and production is not recession. It's bull market stuff. The more they produce, such as CDMA2000 and W-CDMA cyberphones, the better I'll like it. <This will cost megabucks which he refuses to pay for with higher taxes, but would rather lower taxes and expand the deficits. Deficits = inflation, as we all know > NO worries mate! There is no inflation. The current worried brows are about deflation. Good old King George II is doing it right. He's pixelating new dollars flat out and using those to fight the empire's wars. He can afford heaps. He's already got hold of vast oil fields and opened Iraq to Globalstar, which is selling like crazy there. Mqurice